The Long Standing History of the Oppression of Women

A Clinical Lesson at the Salpetriere is a painting that depicts a huge advancement in the study of psychoanalysis. It shows Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist, lecturing as well as demonstrating his scientific approach to curing hysteria to other doctors. In the painting, a woman suffering from hysteria is passed out on Charcot’s arm while the other doctors, all male, observe them. Behind Charcot and the hysterical woman another woman in white, presumably a nurse, stands behind them seemingly trying to help. While I am grateful for his lecture and the advancements in medicine Charcot’s lecture lead to, I am angered by this painting because the lack of women in the room and the treatment of the woman in the painting depicts what little power women had then, and the shortage of power women have now.

Hysteria is defined as an exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion, which means that both women and men experience hysteria. However, around the 1870s hysteria was a condition regularly found in women, but male doctors were the ones who worked to treat this condition. This angers me because women were restricted by law and practice to practice in the medical profession during the 1800s (Macatee). This means that hysteria and many other conditions that women mostly suffered from were expected to be treated by men who at first were too ignorant/egotistical to properly treat them. Women had to leave their fates to men who wrote off their sickness as wickedness and exaggeration (Freud 2201). From my perspective the painting shows the prejudice women suffered back then and continue to suffer from today.

Recently in the news there are many new laws regarding women’s bodies, like abortion laws, and most of those laws are made by men. There have even been pictures surfacing the internet showing rooms full of male politicians making laws concerning women. Which is similar to the picture, because the picture shows a woman’s fate resting in the hands of males. The lack of females in power today angers me because many laws affecting females are restricting them from fully being able to live their lives. “Anti-abortion laws have powerful and negative economic consequences. Women in the U.S. who want an abortions but are denied one, are more likely to spend years living in poverty than women with abortion access” (Global Fund for Women).  If women were in power making decisions about women’s bodies then this oppression of women’s bodies probably wouldn’t happen, and women would be able to move freely up the economic ladder.

 This painting represents inequality to me. It represents all the things women don’t have because of patriarchy. The anger the painting evokes in me makes me want to step up and fight back for change. The lecture that Charcot gave at the Salpetriere helped greatly in the development of medicine to cure hysteria, but I wish there were more women in the picture who were also there to learn how to cure hysteria. I hope that in the near present there will be more women in power, and only women  making decisions on things that affect their bodies.

Sources:

-Macatee, Susan. “Women in Medicine in 1870.” Slip Into Something Victorian, 10 Apr. 2009, https://slipintosomethingvictorian.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/women-in-medicine-in-1870/.-“U.S.’s Extreme Anti-Abortion Policies Put Women’s Lives at Risk – in the U.S. and Around the Globe.” Global Fund for Women, 16 May 2019, https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/alabama-abortion-ban/.